


Maybe This Time

by LaVieEnRose



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Related, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 08:18:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14973002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Justin is sick when they break up in Season 5.





	Maybe This Time

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno man, the idea came to me and wouldn't leave me alone. I'm not really saying anything new here, but who doesn't like some sick Justin? (If your answer is "Uh, me?" you might be reading the wrong person.)

Brian waits until Justin has to pause mid-shave to sneeze six times before he says anything. He rinses his own razor under the sink and says, “Allergies acting up?”

Justin shrugs.

Brian leans against the counter. “Place was just cleaned yesterday.” 

Justin clears his throat, once, twice. “I think I'm getting a cold, actually.”

Brian very deliberately doesn't say _Christ, again?_ but the effort not to means it takes him a minute to do anything at all. Justin finishes shaving with a small, congested sigh, and Brian comes up behind him, their bodies slick from the shower, and wraps one arm around Justin's taut waist, the other around his head to palm his forehead. He feels a little warm, maybe, but it's hard to tell right out of the shower.

Justin relaxes into his arms, and Brian feels momentarily good about that before it hits that he really shouldn't have worried that Justin _wouldn't_ , and then he feels a whole, whole lot worse.

He smacks a kiss on Justin's cheek. “Stay home tonight,” he says, hopefully gently.

“I was going to,” Justin says.

They fuck and eat dinner before Brian goes out, in silence only broken by Justin's sniffling.

**

Brian comes home the next night in a good mood, fresh from a successful night at Babylon, full of plans to pass the cheer on to Justin. He gets like this sometimes, out of nowhere gets the urge to do all that romantic crap that the other ninety-nine percent of him would puke just thinking about, and he's trained himself to ride the wave of it until it abruptly dies and he inevitably lashes out at Justin out of embarrassment, resentment, _entrapment,_ but every time he thinks, maybe it won't happen this time, maybe I can just be nice to the kid like a fucking human this time, maybe I'll stay here.

His plans to blow Justin slowly, to kiss every inch of him and make him purr and moan and beg, come to a halt when he comes in and sees Justin stretched out on the couch with a red flush on his nose and a bit of a glassy look in his eyes, but honestly, switching gears on this one is barely an inconvenience. It's the urge to _do something_ for Justin that matters, not what he actually does, so he opens his mouth to ask Justin how he's feeling and does he still have a fever and has he eaten and would he like some soup and should Brian run him a bath, he is really, truly going to say all those things, and he will always wonder if maybe he'd just said them a little faster, if maybe that would have made a difference, but Justin speaks first and says he's been thinking, and Brian forgets immediately and entirely that Justin is sick, because all he can feel is his own stomach somewhere down by the floor.

He remembers a few impossibly short minutes later, when Justin's hugging him, his hideous fucking duffel bag next to him on the floor, and he pulls back to cough harshly into his elbow, and Brian's throat twists.

“No, come on,” Brian says, without meaning to. “This is fucking stupid.”

Justin narrows his eyes at him. Probably wondering, just like Brian is, what part exactly is fucking stupid.

And Brian fumbles. “Fucking stay until you're well, Christ.”

It's not what Justin was hoping to hear, and it's definitely not what Brian was hoping to say, but there it is. Did you think he was going to beg, Sunshine?

Did you think you were going to beg, Brian?

You really thought this time you were going to be different? 

“It's not like I'm going to be living on the street,” Justin says. “I'll be fine. It's a cold.”

He's going to Debbie's, Brian assumes, and it's not like she won't take better care of him than Brian could anyway. 

“Right,” Brian says. “Of course.”

And Justin gives him that tight smile from the door, and then he's gone.

**

Less than thirty hours later, he's too busy barreling past Ben to give much thought to his hissed, “You'll wake up Justin,” because since when is the kid asleep by one AM, and since when does the kid fucking _live here,_ and why had Brian been stupid enough to think that Justin cared whether his white picket fence life included him?

“He was perfectly happy!” he yells at Michael, who's rooting through his kitchen cabinets.

“He was _never_ happy,” Michael snaps back, and for some reason—for every reason—Brian realizes right now that yesterday, there was no question of who would stay in the loft and who would leave. There was no doubt, for either of them, that Brian asking Justin to move in did not change the fact that the loft was his, the life was his, and that Justin had not had a home since he was seventeen and his father showed up at Babylon.

_A house,_ Justin had asked for, two weeks ago, when Brian realized they were well and truly fucked. _A family._

“That's not me,” Brian explodes, cutting off Michael's monologue he was barely, could barely listen to.

“Don't we all know!”

And they keep going, and keep going, and the silence that rings out after Michael yells, “Who wouldn't,” the never-ending streams of insults Brian's brain is firing at Michael, at Justin, at himself, the echo of Justin's words, a house, a family, a house, a family, is so fucking loud, but not as loud as the cough that breaks through from upstairs. Michael glares at him and goes back to the kitchen to look through the cabinets again, but Brian is on autopilot now, has shut everything off because that cough is ugly and wet and Justin's, and he starts up the stairs and is halfway up when Michael grabs his arm to stop him, a bottle of cough syrup in his other hand.

The whole time they were fighting, he was looking for medicine for Justin, who Brian had, once-fucking-again, forgotten was sick.

Brian reels.

_Who wouldn't._

“I've got it,” Michael says.

Brian rips the cough syrup out of his hands and stalks back down the stairs, towards the door.

“What the fuck?” Michael says.

“Just what he needs,” Brian calls back. “A side of anaphylactic shock.”

He still has some things.

**

He runs into Justin a week later outside the Center, and this time has no opportunity to forget that he's sick. Justin's pale and sweaty, coughing into his elbow every few sentences, and Brian's furious at him for being out in the cold, at every single person who's seen Justin tonight and not immediately sent him home, at himself, at everything.

He interrupts Justin's small talk about his new apartment to pull back the sleeve of his overcoat and press his arm against Justin's forehead. Justin stiffens but doesn't pull away.

Brian gives him a look and takes back his arm.

“It gets great light,” Justin says, and coughs, and coughs.

“That sounds really fucking bad,” Brian says, assuming it's obvious he doesn't mean the light.

Justin clears his throat, takes a wheezy breath. “I know. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow.” He looks at Brian defiantly. He's proud. Brian was expecting Justin to deflect, deny, to insist he's fine, to eventually need to be dragged, and instead he went and made an appointment like a fucking functional adult, who the fuck taught him to do that? 

He should be proud, and Brian's not going to let him, because he does not know how else to handle Justin doing something Brian didn't teach him.

“Who's bringing you?” Brian says.

Justin raises an eyebrow. “Bringing me? I'm not a dish at a pot luck.”

“Come on.”

“You come on,” Justin says, so so much for that maturity thing. “I'm an adult. I don't need a chaperone to go to a doctor's appointment.”

“Because last time you had bronchitis you were so perfectly functional, is that it? Didn't need any help at all?” 

It's a low blow, but that doesn't mean it's not effective.

“Screw you,” Justin says, and he walks right past Brian and Brian thinks, effective at _fucking what_ , exactly?

**

The last time Justin had bronchitis was shortly before he left for his first trip to LA. He'd been hard at work on a project for school and Brian hadn't seen him for three days when he got a call at the office on Wednesday afternoon.

“What's the deal with your immune system?” Justin asked.

Brain propped his feet up on his desk. “Do you want a science lesson? I think Remson's still in the building. Want me to put you on speaker and you can yell really loud?”

“I mean, are you still like a delicate flower from radiation that's going to drop dead if someone breathes on you, or are you...I don't know. A nice, sturdy flower.”

“Fuck you,” Brian said with a laugh. “I'm good as new.” He stretched. “Sounds like you're planning something wild for this weekend...?”

“Only if your definition of wild is me at home with a box of tissues.”

“It could be, but somehow I don't think that's what you're talking about,” Brian said. “You sick?”

“Yeah. I thought I'd call and warn you in case it was going to be the death of you.”

Brian looked around the room reflexively to make sure he was alone. “You're okay?”

A small laugh from Justin, gentle, hoarse, that somehow went right to Brian's dick. “I'm fine,” Justin said. “It's just a cold. I'm going to lie around and I'll be fine by Monday.”

“Good,” Brian said. “I'm beginning to forget what you look like.”

He was pleased and not a bit surprised when he got an email less than a minute after they hung up with a picture of Justin's cock.

Before he'd heard from Justin, Brian had been planning to call him that night and tell him enough, bring his shit over to the loft and he'd help him with the project, this was ridiculous, so now once work was over he felt restless. He ended up at the grocery store, and before he knew it he was buying soup and cough drops and coasting on the 'fuck it, why not' attitude he had going on, and half an hour later Daphne opened the door to the apartment.

“You know he's a biohazard, right?” she said, after their usual flirting. “He's holed up in his room.”

“I know, but that's just the kind of selfless partner I am,” Brian said, and this, of all things, seemed to be what alerted Justin to his arrival. He opened the door to his room and poked his head out, and his expression was this mixture of confusion and delight that Brian honestly, in that moment, hoped he'd see every fucking day until he died.

Brian held up a can of soup.

“What the fuck,” Justin laughed.

Daphne rolled her eyes and held up her textbook. “I'll leave you two alone.”

Justin sat on a stool in their minuscule kitchen and watched in disbelief while Brian emptied a can of soup into a pot. “You know I'm fine, right?” Justin said. “If you're trying to make sure I have a good final memory of you, you've mistimed it.”

“I'm not here weeping over your prone figure,” Brian said. “Do you see my eyes brimming with tears of concern? Hear my voice breaking though all the while I maintain a brave face on your behalf?”

“So what's with the boyfriend shit?” Justin asked.

Brian was quiet for a minute, stirring the soup.

Justin said, “If this is because I took care of you when you had cancer...”

“It is and it isn't,” Brian said. “Not the way you're thinking. I'm not trying to...make things even, or take care of some guilt, or whatever the fuck.”

Justin wrinkled his nose, sneezed, and then went back to watching him seriously, and Brian bit back a smile.

“This is how it's supposed to be,” Brian said. “You're supposed to be the one who's fallen down a well, and I come and haul you back up.”

“Jesus Christ, Brian, it's a cold.”

“Things are finally feeling normal again,” Brian said stubbornly. “Can you just let me have this?” 

“Let you enjoy my misery because it reminds you you don't have cancer?” 

“Yeah.”

Justin sighed. “Why did I ever think my virus could be about me?” 

Brian kissed his warm forehead. “No idea. You have a fever, have you taken anything?”

“No. I always run fevers when I'm sick,” he said, as if this was some new and exciting fact about him that Brian didn't know by now. “It'll go down.”

They ate soup on the couch and watched whatever movie was playing on one of Justin's three channels and Justin grew gradually, undramatically sicker as the night went on, but Brian had expected that. He let him lie down with his head in his lap and ran his hand over his head, absentmindedly playing with the scar behind his ear.

“Are you staying over?” Justin asked, his voice a lot hoarser than it had been even an hour ago.

“Yeah. I have to leave really early, though. Conference call with China. Gotta grab 'em before they go to bed.” He kissed Justin's hairline.

“You don't have to stay over.”

“Shut up, Justin,” Brian said, and Justin laughed in a startled little way.

When the movie was over, Brian fucked him slowly but deeply in his tiny, filthy little bedroom and dropped kisses in the hollow of his sore throat. Justin wrapped his legs around Brian's neck and coughed his way through an orgasm and fell asleep with Brian still inside him. He slept through Brian's alarm in the morning, but Brian gently shook him awake after he was dressed.

“I gotta go,” he said.

Justin sat up, looking a little lost and not a little feverish.

Brian gave him a bottle of water and some aspirin. “You still planning on going to class today?”

He nodded, dropping his head into his hands.

“All right, but come to the loft tonight,” Brian said. “This bed hurts my back.”

Brian's last meeting was canceled that day and he got home at an unexpected five-thirty to find an unexpected Justin Taylor, whose last class didn't end until seven, already curled up in bed. He stuck a mug of water in the microwave and loped up to the bed, checking Justin's temperature with his palm and frowning a little. Justin stirred at the touch and immediately started coughing.

“Not so much on school, then?” Brian asked.

Justin shook his head, still coughing.

Brian squeezed his hand. “Hang tight. I'm making tea.”

“Thanks.”

“Don't talk. You sound like shit.”

Brian went back to the kitchen and filled a mug with half an inch of honey, the way Justin always took his tea, and then poured in hot water and dropped in a tea bag. “You gotta make a doctor's appointment tomorrow,” he called into the bedroom. “I don't think this is a cold.” Justin just coughed in response.

He came back, placed the mug into Justin's hands, and got to work changing out of his suit and into something more comfortable. “You think you're going to be awake for a while?” he asked Justin. “We could move to the cushions, put something on TV.”

Justin shook his head, and sure enough, his eyes were already drooping. Brian chuckled and crawled up behind him on the bed.

And so that was their next few days. Brian, who never took a full day off through the whole cancer ordeal, took Friday off to bring Justin to the doctor and then feed him his antibiotics and read a book one-handed while his other rubbed circles on Justin's chest. Brian, who didn't do relationships, who couldn't commit to a brand of coffee filters, somehow felt a kind of equilibrium restored when he was lying here nursing a boy running an impractically high fever. 

Brian, standing on a cold street outside the Gay and Lesbian center, threw it right back in Justin's face.

**

He supposes, given how Justin looked last night, there's a kind of inevitability when his office phone rings at ten AM, but that doesn't mean he's not surprised Justin didn't call someone, anyone else.

In a way, it makes this break up feel realer. When Justin left for Ethan, they spent ages pretending to be strangers, and then casual acquaintances, playing that there was nothing between them, that there never had been. Now, it seems like neither of this is bothering to try to pretend they're not inextricably linked, that Justin could walk out that door again and again and a-fucking-gain and it's past the point where they can ever really be rid of each other.

If we're talking inevitability...that's where that ends, because if they will never be rid of each other, there's no real reason to try to make it work. There's no promise of a happy ending at the end of this. There's no hope that a facade will fall, and they'll find themselves in each other's arms again. Nobody's faking anything. They're going to hang around making each other miserable and giving each other nothing until they're rolled into the morgue.

Which might be sooner rather than later for Justin, judging by his wheeze on the end of the line.

“My appointment's in an hour and a half,” Justin says, hoarse, wavery, resigned. “I think I need a ride.”

“So call a cab,” Brian says, but he's already checking his schedule, seeing what he can shift around.

Justin doesn't say anything.

“Well?” Brian says.

When he finally talks, his voice is even smaller. “I don't think I can make it down the stairs.”

**

All the way over, Brian was trying to figure out if Justin was being a drama queen about the stairs or if he was a lot sicker than Brian had imagined. It turns out, neither; Justin just lives on the fucking eighteenth floor of a building with no elevator.

And, he realizes when he opens the door, and Justin's shivering on the couch in two sweaters and gloves, no heat.

“This is really good,” Brian says. “Truly, one of your better ideas.”

Justin coughs.

“Seriously, I'm dying to know what the thought process was last night, coming back to this place. Come to think of it, moving in here when you already knew you were getting sick. You know what, how about moving in here at all?”

“I can afford it,” Justin says. “It's mine.”

Brian didn't think anything in the world could shut him off the rant he was gearing towards, but he feels his mouth snap shut.

_A house. A family._

Justin sneezes and shivers and has the decency not to meet Brian's eyes.

“I don't even know how the fuck to get you out of here,” Brian says. “Rent a crane and lower you from the window, I guess.”

“The windows don't open.”

“Of course they don't.”

Justin pulls himself to his feet, swaying slightly. “Very slowly,” he says. “We're going to get me out of here very slowly.”

Brian finds the apartment's only closet—Jesus--and unearths Justin's coat. “You have your insurance card?”

“Yeah.”

“ID?”

“Uh-huh.”

“List of allergies? Y'know Michael tried to off you the other night.”

“I heard,” Justin says.

Brian sighs and eases the coat over his shoulders. “Yeah, I'm sure you did. C'mon, Sunshine. We'll try to get there before dark.”

**

It's bronchitis, naturally, though it's worse than last time and the doctor says he's teetering on the edge of pneumonia. He gets a prescription for the same antibiotics as last time, but he's allergic to anything that would make him actually feel better or help him get some fucking rest.

“Thanks,” Justin says quietly, back in the car. “For bringing me.” He's running a hell of a fever, but he always manages to stay pretty lucid, save the nightmares. Probably practice from twenty-one—twenty-two next weeks—years of spiking a fever every time he gets so much as a scratchy throat.

Brian shrugs a shoulder. “You know I'm not bringing you back to that shithole, right?”

Justin sighs as much as his wheezy lungs will allow. “I ordered a space heater...”

“Oh, good, so that'll catch fire and your shit lungs will choke to death on the smoke. Which is probably for the best, since it's not like that fucking death trap has a fire exit anyway.”

“I figured you wouldn't bring me back there,” Justin says quietly.

“Maybe you haven't fried every single brain cell yet, then.”

“But I'm sleeping on the couch.”

Brian snorts. “You're not sleeping on the fucking couch.”

“Brian...”

“You have a fever of a hundred and four and you're choking on your own lungs,” Brian says. “I'll sleep on the couch, fuck.”

“Okay,” Justin says quietly.

**

Justin does sleep, as much as the coughing allows, for the rest of the day. Brian settles him with a glass of water and a dose of antibiotics before he goes back to the office. He doesn't check in during the day and comes home without stopping for soup or cough drops and changes his clothes while Justin twists fitfully in his sleep. He heads out to Babylon but feels unfocused and uneasy and leaves before ten. He picks up Thai food on the way, more than he'd usually get—enough for leftovers, he tells himself, and even he is sick of the act at this point but that doesn't tell him how to fucking _stop doing it_ \--and comes home to stare at his computer. 

At around eleven, Justin finally stirs. Brian doesn't look up as Justin pads into the kitchen and starts looking through the cupboard, but a few minutes later Justin's still searching around and Brian's inexplicably annoyed.

“What the fuck are you looking for?” he says.

“Tea.”

“I threw it out.”

The searching noises stop. “You what?”

Brian swivels his chair towards the kitchen and forces himself not to startle at Justin's appearance. He looks, not to put too fine a point on it, like fucking shit, his hair matted with sweat, his eyes glazed, his t-shirt wet and sticking to him. 

“I threw it out,” Brian says. “You were the only one who ever drank that shit.”

“So you just threw it away?”

“What the fuck was I supposed to do? It's not like you gave me a mailing address for your little efficiency.”

Justin wipes his nose on his wrist. “I'm going to take a shower.”

He snorts.

“The fuck you are. You raise your body temperature any more and you're going to pass out on the bathroom floor.” 

“I don't need to be babysat,” Justin says.

“What _do_ you need, Justin?” Brian says, and even he doesn't know what he means, why he says it, but Justin's too out of it to notice.

“I need some tea,” he says miserably.

Brian swallows. “I'll make you some coffee, okay?” 

“Okay.”

“You should have some juice, too.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

Justin ends up warming up some of the food, and he sits at the counter and eats with his head resting in his other hand, and Brian cleans the kitchen, very slowly.

“I can't believe you threw out perfectly good tea bags,” Justin says eventually.

Brian throws a plate at the sink. “Why does it fucking surprise you that I can't just open the cabinets and look at your shit every day? Are we really fucking going through some charade on this? Is there someone else in this room besides the two of us who we need to impress with how well-adjusted I am, Sunshine?”

Justin shakes his head and laughs a little, bitterly, eyes down on his food.

“What,” Brian says. 

“All you had to do was throw away a box of tea bags,” he says. “One trip to the garbage chute and I lift right out. You have to throw out some tea bags, and I get an apartment with no heat and fucking pneumonia.”

_A house. A family._

“Bronchitis,” Brian says, and he won't pretend it's not to be cruel.

Justin drinks his juice.

“You're the one who chose to leave,” Brian says. “Don't think you can twist the story around and make yourself the victim just because you're the one in the sick bed this time.”

“I thought that's how you liked me,” Justin says.

“Go the fuck to bed.”

Justin pushes his plate away and slowly, shakily, makes his way up to the bedroom. 

“You know, for the record?” Brian says, when Justin's halfway up the stairs. Justin turns around.

Brian means to say something cruel again. He really does.

“For the record," Brian says. "I never said any of this was fair to you."

**

Brian's awake on the couch at four AM because Justin cannot, physically cannot, stop coughing, and Brian's hugging a pillow to his chest to keep himself still. He hears Justin stumble out of bed, still coughing, and winces at the unsteady rush to the bathroom, the sound of him vomiting. That's new.

Fuck it. He gets a bottle of water and a clean t-shirt—he's sure Justin's sweated through yet another—and meets him in the bedroom when he comes out. Justin changes without a word, panting but at least not coughing anymore.

“I want to take your temperature,” Brian says.

Justin shrugs. “It's high. It doesn't matter.”

“Lie down.”

Justin looks up at him, eyes shining in the dark. “Lie down with me? Please?”

“Yeah.”

He helps Justin into bed and then crawls in behind him, drapes an arm over his body and presses his hand to his chest. Justin shivers against him.

“It didn't help, you know,” Brian says, after a while. “Throwing away the tea bags.”

Justin's teeth chatter, and Brian pulls him closer. “Neither did the shitty apartment,” Justin says. “It's still not...” He shrugs.

“How about the pneumonia, did that help?”

“Bronchitis,” Justin says. “That either.”

Brian rubs small circles with his thumb. “I don't know what's going to help,” he admits.

Justin coughs. “I don't think anything is.”

"Think we're fucked for life at this point?"

"Probably." He coughs again, swallows. "Miserable together, miserable apart..."

"At least if we got back together there'd be sex."

"If you try to fuck me right now I will actually die."

Brian buries his nose in the back of Justin's neck and smells his hair, some unfamiliar shampoo. Smells sweat and sick and under it all, _Justin._

Gradually, Justin's breathing evens out underneath his hand.

Brian stays awake for a long time, pretending this is just like last time, that in the morning Justin will be better, and he'll turn around and give Brian a sleepy smile and a kiss, pretending he doesn't hear words echoing in his head like a bell, like a fucking...like a vow.

A house.

A family.

A house.

A family.

A house.


End file.
